


The Memeing of Dorian Gray

by aldalin



Category: The Picture of Dorian Gray - Oscar Wilde
Genre: Angst, Crack, Disaster Gays, i'm sorry oscar wilde, if you don't read the last few lines then this is a legitimate scene, this was initially supposed to be pure crack but then i took it way too seriously
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-10
Updated: 2019-11-10
Packaged: 2021-01-26 18:03:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,337
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21378271
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aldalin/pseuds/aldalin
Summary: Dorian Gray comes to Alan Campbell in a moment in need, eyes pleading and heart deceiving. What he doesn't know is that Alan has a few tricks up his sleeve.Alternatively titled: "I (the author) was put on this Earth for a reason, and this is definitely not it."
Relationships: past Alan Campbell/Dorian Gray
Comments: 8
Kudos: 24





	The Memeing of Dorian Gray

**Author's Note:**

> ***Quick disclaimer: all dialogue from this scene is directly from the book so that it would be consistent. Everything else is mine.***

Alan Campbell stood before a closed door, dreading what he would find when it was opened. He didn’t move, didn’t dare to knock on the door. It was in his best interest to turn around and get as far away from this house as soon as possible. But he didn’t. He stared at the knocker on the door, sneering at the obscene amount of money it must have cost. He tried as hard as he could to distract himself, hoping that he could convince himself to walk away.

He must have been there for several minutes because a policeman across the street had begun to eye him. He probably looked quite suspicious, standing in front of a doorway, not entering but not leaving either. Finally, he succumbed to the pressure of his heart—and the hostile stare of the policeman—and knocked on the door. 

It took a while for anyone to answer the door, and Alan began to sigh in relief at the thought that no one was home. It meant he was free to go. That he was absolved of all responsibility. But his relief came too soon, for a second later he was greeted with the too-wide smile of the servant of the house. 

“Greetings, Mr. Campbell,” he said, to which Alan just nodded. He hadn’t collected himself well enough to talk yet. The servant walked him through several familiar rooms, each holding their own memories—both good and bad—that invaded Alan’s mind as he passed through. Alan’s chest tightened, and he had to lower his gaze down to his steps to quell the images in his head. 

Finally, they reached a doorway. Alan knew who would be behind it, and he knew that whatever happened, it wouldn’t be favorable for him. But he still didn’t run away. He ignored every possible survival instinct that his brain sent to his body. The servant opened the door.

“Mr. Alan Campbell, sir,” he said to the man in the room. Since he hadn’t been invited into the room yet, Alan still couldn’t see the man. 

“Ask him to come in at once, Francis,” came the familiar voice. Alan never thought he’d hear it again. When the door opened all the way, Alan’s heart stopped. There he was, right there. Dorian Gray. The most handsome sinner he had ever seen. His hair was still as dark and curly as the last time Alan had seen him, his face still as youthful. His eyes, however, had aged. They were no longer as bright as a child’s, like they had been darkened by the devilry in his soul. It seemed that, no matter what Dorian had done to preserve his boyish appearance, he couldn’t hide the degradation of his spirit. 

Dorian looked up at Alan, smiling in the deceptive way he always had that made one feel as if he knew all their secrets. In Alan’s case, he did. 

“Alan! This is kind of you. I thank you for coming.” 

“I had intended never to enter your house again, Gray. But you said it was a matter of life and death.” Even with the seriousness of the situation, Alan shouldn’t have come. He was just too weak to ignore someone in need. Especially if that person was Dorian. No matter how hard he had tried to kill it, his heart still felt something for Dorian. Even with everything that had happened between them. 

Still, Alan considered himself to be skilled at pretending—people like him had to be. He maintained an apathetic tone of voice and stared at Dorian, partly to communicate some form of intimidation and partly because Dorian was impossible  _ not  _ to look at. 

“It is a matter of life and death, Alan, and to more than one person. Sit down.” Dorian said, waving Alan to the table where they both sat. At those words, Alan’s eyebrow quirked. Dorian had gotten into his fair share of trouble, but never something of this caliber. When Alan read the words “a matter of life and death” in Dorian’s letter, he had thought that Dorian was merely being his melodramatic self. Never would Alan have placed him in a situation of  _ actual _ life and death. 

The two sat in silence for a bit. Alan didn’t want to offer anything to the conversation. He was here because Dorian had called him; it was up to Dorian to tell him what he wanted. Dorian seemed unsure, looking at Alan’s expression for a few seconds before shifting his gaze back to his own wringing hands. 

Then he leaned over to Alan, speaking in a hushed tone, “Alan, in a locked room at the top of this house, a room to which nobody but myself has access, a dead man is seated at a table. He has been dead ten hours now. Don’t stir, and don’t look at me like that. Who the man is, why he died, how he died, are matters that do not concern you. What you have to do is this—”

Alan knew that coming here was a terrible idea. He knew that Dorian brought nothing but trouble in his wake. Hadn’t he learned that five years ago? Alan began to stand up, but Dorian grabbed his arm. Alan tried to shake him off, saying, “Stop, Gray. I don’t want to know anything further. Whether what you have told me is true or not true, doesn’t concern me. I entirely decline to be mixed up in your life. Keep your horrible secrets to yourself. They don’t interest me any more.”

Dorian wouldn’t let it go. “Alan, they will have to interest you. This one will have to interest you. I am awfully sorry for you, Alan. But I can’t help myself. You are the one man who is able to save me. I am forced to bring you into the matter. I have no option. Alan, you are a scientist. You know about chemistry, and things of that kind. You have made experiments. What you have got to do is to destroy the thing that is up-stairs,—to destroy it so that not a vestige will be left of it. Nobody saw this person come into the house. Indeed, at the present moment he is supposed to be in Paris. He will not be missed for months. When he is missed, there must be no trace of him found here. You, Alan, you must change him, and everything that belongs to him, into a handful of ashes that I may scatter in the air.”

Alan couldn’t bear to hear it anymore. He cursed himself for falling victim to his own sentimentality. “You are mad, Dorian,” he spat, not realizing his slip of the tongue.

“Ah! I was waiting for you to call me Dorian.”

“You are mad, I tell you,—mad to imagine that I would raise a finger to help you, mad to make this monstrous confession. I will have nothing to do with this matter, whatever it is. Do you think I am going to peril my reputation for you? What is it to me what devil’s work you are up to?” Of course, Alan had already periled his own reputation for Dorian. Ever since their parting, others had remarked on his sour demeanor and general unlikability. He had become somewhat of an outcast. 

Despite Alan’s clear disgust, Dorian pressed on. “It was a suicide, Alan.”

Perhaps it was. Still, Alan couldn’t help but suspect that Dorian had something to do with the death. “I am glad of that. But who drove him to it? You, I should fancy.”

“Do you still refuse to do this, for me?”

“Of course I refuse. I will have absolutely nothing to do with it. I don’t care what shame comes on you. You deserve it all. I should not be sorry to see you disgraced, publicly disgraced. How dare you ask me, of all men in the world, to mix myself up in this horror? I should have thought you knew more about people’s characters. Your friend Lord Henry Wotton can’t have taught you much about psychology, whatever else he has taught you. Nothing will induce me to stir a step to help you. You have come to the wrong man. Go to some of your friends. Don’t come to me.”

Dorian had long since dropped his arm, but Alan was still constrained by his gaze. There was something in it, some faux tragedy that tugged at Alan’s heartstrings, even though he knew that it was all an act. Alan’s words had one meaning; his heart held another. But his head knew the right way, so he continued to let it guide him. He wasn’t going to have his life ruined by Dorian Gray ever again.

At that moment, Dorian dropped the act. His face morphed from desperation to detached. “Alan, it was murder. I killed him. You don’t know what he had made me suffer. Whatever my life is, he had more to do with the making or the marring of it than poor Harry has had. He may not have intended it, the result was the same.” 

Although Alan had suspected it since Dorian first spoke of the dead man, hearing Dorian admit murder shocked him. “Murder! Good God, Dorian, is that what you have come to? I shall not inform upon you. It is not my business. Besides, you are certain to be arrested, without my stirring in the matter. Nobody ever commits a murder without doing something stupid. But I will have nothing to do with it.”

“All I ask of you is to perform a certain scientific experiment. You go to hospitals and dead-houses, and the horrors that you do there don’t affect you. If in some hideous dissecting-room or fetid laboratory you found this man lying on a leaden table with red gutters scooped out in it, you would simply look upon him as an admirable subject. You would not turn a hair. You would not believe that you were doing anything wrong. On the contrary, you would probably feel that you were benefiting the human race, or increasing the sum of knowledge in the world, or gratifying intellectual curiosity, or something of that kind. What I want you to do is simply what you have often done before. Indeed, to destroy a body must be less horrible than what you are accustomed to work at. And, remember, it is the only piece of evidence against me. If it is discovered, I am lost; and it is sure to be discovered unless you help me.”

Any pity in Alan’s heart had dissolved into fury. How dare Dorian try to manipulate him into colluding with his atrocious actions? He would take no more. “I have no desire to help you. You forget that. I am simply indifferent to the whole thing. It has nothing to do with me.”

“Alan, I entreat you. Think of the position I am in. Just before you came I almost fainted with terror. No! don’t think of that. Look at the matter purely from the scientific point of view. You don’t inquire where the dead things on which you experiment come from. Don’t inquire now. I have told you too much as it is. But I beg of you to do this. We were friends once, Alan.”

Just the mention of their former relationship made Alan’s fists clench, and his blood boil. It brought back the memory of their final moments together, a quarrel much like this. Everything that Alan hated about Dorian Gray, everything that had made him leave; it was all coming back to him now, filling Alan’s heart and mind with pure contempt. “Don’t speak about those days, Dorian: they are dead,” he said, turning away.

“The dead linger sometimes. The man up-stairs will not go away. He is sitting at the table with bowed head and outstretched arms. Alan! Alan! if you don’t come to my assistance I am ruined. Why, they will hang me, Alan! Don’t you understand? They will hang me for what I have done.”

“There is no good in prolonging this scene. I refuse absolutely to do anything in the matter. It is insane of you to ask me.”

“You refuse absolutely?” Dorian asked. A hint of a smile ghosted his lips. It unnerved Alan.

“Yes.”

At hearing Alan’s final declination, Dorian sighed, looking at Alan with patronizing tenderness. The soft expression looked fitting on Dorian’s gentle face, much more than the fierce desperation that it had held seconds prior, but Alan knew that nothing good would come of it. Dorian walked over to another corner of the room—to his desk—and grabbed a piece of paper. He wrote for a few seconds, only a few words. Alan strained his neck, trying to discern what Dorian was writing, but Dorian’s arm blocked his sight. He didn’t want Alan to read it until he finished.

After a few seconds of silence, absent even of the scribbling of pen on paper, Dorian appeared satisfied with his letter, nodding and folding the piece of paper in half. He walked over to hand it to Alan, and moved to the other side of the room to look out the window. 

Alan hesitated to open the paper, concerned about what would be written on it. Dorian didn’t move, didn’t look over at him, and didn’t demand that he read it. He just stared; his eyes absent of all emotion. Alan slowly unfolded the sheet of paper in his hands. 

On it were three powerful words. Three words that, if they were shared, had the power to ruin Alan’s entire life.

_ “ur gay lol” _

Alan closed his eyes and sighed. He knew what Dorian was trying to do. Blackmail, in its purest form. Dorian was clever, but not clever enough. Alan reached into his pocket, taking out a small piece of thick paper, brightly colored with a small arrow design in the center.

An Uno Reverse Card. 

  
  



End file.
